| History: | The company was operating an eleven-mile logging tram in1928. Flora G. Bowles, A History of Trinity County, Texas commented that “The principle area of the logging operation was known as The Front. “Flat-heads” cut and trimmed the logs. At first, logs were hauled in high wheel carts, pulled by oxen and mules. The logs were hauled to the assembly area, loaded onto log cars with steam loaders and then transferred over company owned trams to the mill. Old tram road beds crisscross the entire area. Moving the ‘front' was a huge operation. An eye witness to one such movement states that it took half a day for all the various equipment and animals to pass his house. The ‘front' was moved whenever an area was cut out. Principal ‘fronts' for this mill were Westville, Carmona, Pinedale, and Oakhurst.”
The Thompson Brothers, having large timber holdings in Trinity County, decided against enlarging the old Willard sawmill in 1907, and chose instead to build a new mill at Trinity, in Trinity County. Construction, however, was delayed a couple of years because of a financial panic. The double band and pony gang mill was eventually built by Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company in 1909, and it operated until it burned on July 19, 1920. Lufkin Foundry built another mill, which began operating on January 8, 1921. The Foundry recorded the drawings under the name of the Rack Crab Lumber Company (Rock Creek Lumber Company), for some reason. The new mill was nearly identical to the previous one, except for the installation of a larger and more powerful gang saw and increased utilization of “slow burning” construction, i.e., creosoting and galvanized corrugated covering of the building frame. A new electric plant was also added which, in addition to providing electric lighting, pumped water from the Trinity River, six miles away. The mill closed in June 1955 under the ownership of Southland Paper Mills Lumber Division.
Rolling stock, in 1910, included two locomotives, forty log cars, seven miles of tram roads, one loader, and one skidder.
According to Keeling the Texas Long Leaf Lumber Company at Trinity operated one geared and fourteen rod locomotives on its tram road. |